Introduction

The Google AdWords API lets developers build applications that interact directly with the AdWords platform. With these applications, advertisers and third parties can more efficiently and creatively manage their large or complex AdWords accounts and campaigns.

The key object in AdWords system is Keyword – word that triggers an Ad. Ads and Keywords are grouped underneath parent object – AdGroup. Each keyword in some AdGroup can trigger any of the Ads in that AdGroup.

Example: Let’s say that in AdGroup A are keyword X and Ad Y. When some user enters into Google’s search engine word X, AdWords system will show Ad Y.

This article will explain how to programmatically add Keywords under some AdGroup. Presented is an application that adds all combinations of certain set of keywords under specified AdGroup. For that purpose application can use one of the following libraries:

Google api-adwords-dotnet

3rd party AdWords API for .NET (GemBox.Ppc)

Keywords

Keyword is an object that specifies on which searches would be some Ad shown. Keyword is composed of two properties: Text and MatchType.
MatchType closely define some Keyword. MatchType can have on of the following values:

Exact

Phrase

Broad

Using Match Type user can specify which variations of Text will trigger some Ad. Although keyword that has Broad match will be triggered by the largest set of search words, it’s the most expensive. On the other hand keyword with Exact match will be triggered only if user searches for the word that is equal to the value that was specified by the Text property. Each of those approaches has some advantages and disadvantages.

AdWordsKeywordGenerator app shows one approach that combines Match types that are provided by the AdWords platform.

AdWordsKeywordGenerator

AdWordsKeywordGenerator takes set of words and makes all combination with those words. After that it uploads them to the AdWords system.

For example, if user specifies words “summer” and “hot”, AdWordsKeywordGenerator will upload keywords:

Summer (Exact match)

Hot (Exact match)

Summer hot (Exact match)

Hot summer (Exact match)

One of the biggest advantages in this approach is that we can review statistics for each phrase. We could add only one word and specify Broad match, but then we couldn’t examine statistic for one specific phrase (in this sample, we couldn’t distinguish phrase “hot” from other phrases).

To use application follow these steps:

Specify Account Information – information that is needed for logging. Help on this is here .

Conclusion

As always in programming, there is more than one method to achieve the same thing.

Google api-adwords-dotnet is a set of proxy classes built from WSDLs plus some extra classes that enables logging to AdWords platform. It is completely free but it is not completely optimized for .NET platform and requires some manual work (casting, setting xxxSpecified properties, different ids, etc).

On the other hand, GemBox.Ppc is optimized for .NET, encapsulates different AdWords services and provides many utilities out of the box. However, Free version has limitations.

Download links

Download the latest version of the application (together with the C# source code):